TVA restores power for another 9,000
Tennessee Valley Authority line crews said Thursday they successfully restored power to two of the final three customer connection points impacted by weekend storms.
In coordination with teams from Lexington Electric Service, power service should soon be restored to nearly 9,000 of their customers.
TVA crews overcame delays caused by high winds overnight to safely complete rebuilding two complex transmission structures supporting multiple high-voltage lines.
Before the Lexington connection points were energized, TVA and impacted local power companies had fewer than 16,000 consumers without power as of noon Thursday. More than 254,000 consumers were initially impacted after the storms cleared the region on Saturday.
TVA crews continue to coordinate with Mayfield Electric and Water Services in Kentucky to restore service to one of the hardest hit areas, which suffered extensive damage to its electric infrastructure.
Sidewalk Labs head leaves the company
Google parent company Alphabet is folding one of its subsidiaries back into Google as the startup’s founder steps down to confront a neurological disease.
Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff said Thursday he’s leaving the company focused on urban planning technology because he “very likely” has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Sidewalk Labs was one of a hodgepodge of projects to spin off from Google when the tech giant put itself under a new holding company, Alphabet, in 2015. The idea was to separate Google’s riskier explorations of futuristic technology such as self-driving cars, delivery drones, longshot medical advances and internet-beaming balloons from its highly profitable, advertising-fueled core business.
But Doctoroff said in a Medium post about his departure Thursday that four products developed by Sidewalk Labs now fit squarely into Google’s commitments to be more environmentally sustainable and go carbon-free by 2030.
His venture is best known for trying to transform a rundown part of Toronto’s waterfront into a wired smart-city community before abandoning that project last year. It’s also built low-cost sensors for managing parking and energy use and worked on projects with real estate developers in Las Vegas, Miami, San Francisco and Vancouver, Washington.
– Compiled by Dave Flessner